


Navigate, Navigate

by eudaimon



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 13:50:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being embedded wasn't easy, but the fact remains - Mac's the only one Jim would walk through fire for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Navigate, Navigate

**Author's Note:**

> First fic in the fandom! I'm fascinated by the fact that Mac and Jim were embedded together, that they're as close as they are, and that Jim _never_ had a crush on her. It probably makes sense that I went here first, since Generation Kill is the fandom on my heart.
> 
> More of this to come, I hope!

Things that he was there for, in no particular order:

A summer internship.  
A tour of duty.  
The day that things categorically fell apart (though he didn't really recognise that until later).  
A shooting.  
A protest.  
A stabbing.  
The moment when neither of them could bear to be alone any longer.

And coming home.

*

Some boys dream of being soldiers, but that was never it for Jim Harper. All the way through college, Jim thought that he wanted to be an editor. It wasn't until he met Mac that he changed his mind. - thought that, maybe, he'd aim for producing instead. For, like, a split second, he thought that he wanted to sleep with her, but all of ten minutes later, he'd figured out the truth - he just wanted to be _be_ her instead.

To be even close to as good as she was.

If Mac hadn't given him an internship the way she did (like Don before him, as it turned out), then maybe things would have turned out differently. Jim likes to think that he'd have still found his way into doing the news, but it might have been a longer road, more circuitous, with an editor's deck at the end. Even when (if) he eventually makes E.P on his own show, he'll never be able to do it quite the same way as Mac does - he can't imagine that anyone would. But he hopes that, at least, people will be able to tell that, what he learned, he learned from the best.

Mac's got it wrong - he's never had a crush on her.   
He'd just do anything for her. 

*

He won't know the truth about Will until later (and, if she didn't tell him, she didn't tell _anyone_ ), but he recognises the change in her, the way that she goes brittle and sad. Most people wouldn't notice and Jim doesn't really understand it himself, other than knowing that it isn't within his remit to _fix_. 

But that's around the time he starts answering the phone with _what's wrong_ in the middle of the night.

*

He's drunk, when she asks him. Which isn't fair, when he thinks about it later - what chance did he stand?

"You see, the thing is, Jim - the thing is..."  
"You're killing me, Mac."  
"I'm getting there, alright? The thing is that this is an _> amazing_ opportunity. For both of us. It's...what was the guy's name? You know..." She makes a vague gesture with one finger. "Rolling Stone. Generation...Thingy."

That's how he knows that they're both too drunk to be having this conversation: Mac never forgets names sober. Ever.

"Evan...Wright?"

"Wright! Right! That's it! It'll be like him, only we'll be doing the _news_. Fuck Rolling Stone!" She leans back in her chair, hands spread. "Come on, Jim! Do you honestly want somebody else to do this in your place? Do you really want to look back and realise that you let this opportunity pass you by? This is the United States Marine Corps. They don't let just anyone in."

"Mac..."

"And besides that, Jim - who else am I going to take? I need an all-rounder, someone I can trust, someone who can do all the techy bits, be on camera and not drive me out of my _mind_ for as long as I'm out there. I trained you myself, Jim, and I can trust you not to be an arse, and..."

" _Mac_."

"What? Can you hear that I'm trying to be _inspiring_ and _persuasive_ here?"

"Mac, I'm in. I'll go." He finishes the last swallow of his beer. "I'm with you."

"Oh," she says, smiling. "Well, then. Good."

Even then, even almost at the start, he could never say no to her.

*

"Are you going to get shot?"

It's his big sister who says it, but she's just putting the fear in his mom's eyes into words, giving it a name.

"Jesus, Annie - I'm not going to get shot," he says, around a mouthful of his last homemade food for a while. "I'm going to be with Marines. They'll be _right there_."

He says these things and does not think of the twenty-four journalists killed in Afghanistan since   
1992 but there's a page in his notebook where he's written down their names, because what else is a journalist but someone with a duty to bear witness?

Isn't that all they're trying to fucking do here?

*

A secret: Jim is fucking terrified of Marines. They all seem to be at least a foot taller than he is, all clean lines and Sir-yes-Sir and Jim feels untidy and inadequate. Mac, of course, takes to it like a natural, rolling up her shirt sleeves, scraping back her hair. They trade off on the on-camera stuff. Jim edits faster than Mac does, but Mac writes better copy. They share t-shirts, wear Kevlar at breakfast, ride in humvees, piss in dishes, live on MREs and do their best to just report the fucking news. 

*

A Marine sleeps in a hole in the ground called a grave and Jim tries not to dwell on the symbolism of that. Sometimes, in the night, Mac reaches out and grabs hold of his shirt or his arm, holds onto him in her sleep. Whenever that happens, he covers her hand with his and holds on tight.

They're on the edge of the map out here. She's everything that he knows.  
He's always been bad at finding his way in the dark.

Afghanistan is a hard country to like, but they make do. One of the marines here likes to chant and Jim gets used to the sound of _om mani padme hum_ while he's hunched over the laptop, putting together that evening's package. Mac leans with her back against his, reading books on foreign policy, watching the way the world goes by. 

It's comforting, having her that close.

*

She's right: he was lucky he wasn't facing the other way. The bullet wasn't meant for him - it ricocheted, flew off at a mad angle and caught him in the muscle of his ass. The Corpsman managed not to laugh as he stitches him up, but Mac doesn't. She sits, close by, one hand up to cover her mouth, the other stroking through his hair.

"I'm sorry this happened to you, Jim," she said, laughing, and Jim just sighs and leans his chin on a wadded pillow.  
"Thanks, Mac."  
"And that's a nice ass, buster. Well done."  
"Jesus, Mac."

(The wound heals nicely, heals cleanly, and leaves a scar the size of a quarter on his right ass cheek. When he's with Lisa, she traces it with her fingers and asks him about it. Somehow, he manages to make it sound faintly heroic).

*

Islamabad goes bad so quickly that he doesn't even see it happen - one minute they're taping a piece to camera, Mac looking pretty but capable in her Kevlar and one of his shirts, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and the next the crowd is shifting like one body, like a tide and Jim is watching as Mac gets swept away.

Fuck.

For whole, frantic minutes he can hear her but not see her. One moment, she's still screaming his name and then nothing, echoing, which is worse, somehow. He loses a tripod but manages to keep hold of the camera, shoved unceremoniously into a backpack as he yanks his way between sweaty bodies. He hadn't thought it before, hasn't since, but, right then, he couldn't help but wish that he looked just a little less American.

(This isn't years later, isn't Tahrir, so female journalists getting beaten and raped in plain sight isn't news yet, which doesn't stop cold fear knifing down Jim's spine like a blade).

 

He finally finds her sagging in the arms of a Pakistani guy, young, face grim and set. Mac has gone pale, her lips a little white and her free hand, the one that isn't clinging to the guy who's holding her on her feet, is pressed against a spreading, sodden patch on the front of her shirt.

"Oh, Jesus, Mac," he remembers saying, reaching out to cradle her face with both hands. "I don't. You have to. Jesus. Tell me what to do."

He doesn't remember panic like that ever, before or since. He'd felt stupid with it, wiped clean.  
Somehow, incredibly, Mac had smiled, turned her head and kissed the heel of his hand.

"It's fine, Jim. It's fine. Just get me to a Corpsman, okay? Please. It's going to be absolutely fine."

She swoons into his arms like something from an old movie, one of the ones his dad would quote incessantly. He lifts her like she's made out of folded paper; she feels that light.

*

He falls asleep sitting in a chair at a bedside and, when he jerks awake, she's already looking at him.

"Hey," he says, softly, leaning forward across his own knees. "Hey. How're you feeling?"  
"Like shit that got stabbed," she says, her normally high voice croaky and dry. "How many?"  
"How many what?"  
"Stitches, dummy. How many stitches? Is my girlish figure ruined forever?"  
"Oh! None, actually. He glued it...actual superglue."  
"You sound surprised. That's why we have superglue, Jim. Marines. Vietnam."

He finds her thought processes impossible to follow at the best of times.

A moment later, Mac makes this sound that he doesn't recognise; it takes another second to figure out that it was a sob.

"Hey. Hey, Mac, come on..."  
"Could you just...Jim, do you think you could come here for me for a moment and not have it somehow become a massive thing between us? Because I really need...shit...I really just need..."

It's awkward but they make do, curled up together on the narrow bed, his knees behind hers, his chin against her shoulder and his arm around her waist, careful to avoid the dressing that's covering a neat wound that will make a neat scar that will ruin precisely nothing at all.

"That had to be us, though, doesn't it, Mac?" He says, all but breathing the words into her sweaty hair. "We have to go home now, right?"

But her breathing is slow and regular and she shows not a single sign of hearing him.

*

And they don't go home. Not for a long time.

*

It's one of those rare occasions when they're on a base, not on the road, so it's tents instead of graves, the illusion of privacy and two sleeping rolls laid out side by side on camp beds. Jim's rolled onto his side, facing her so, when she reaches out to grab him, it just moves them that bit closer. She holds onto his bicep and their camp-beds are so close that their noses are almost touching. Her thumb strokes against his bare skin.

"Oh, Jim," she breathes. And it's been a long time. He can't help the way that his mouth suddenly goes dry.

His fingers are trembling ever so slightly when he reaches out and touches her ribs. She's wearing a thin tank-top and he can feel the heat of her skin, the throb of her heart and then, a moment later, the swell of her breast against his palm. Jim might be awkward, sometimes, but he's far from a virgin - he was the one who got kicked out of the semester abroad program, wasn't he? He knows how to touch a woman and, when he squeezes Mac's breast, when he rubs his thumb across her hardening nipple, he isn't surprised when she moans.

There's an art to doing this kind of thing on a camp bed. They shift onto one bed and nobody strips but clothes get pushed out of the way. Jim feels kind of like he's outside of his body as he kisses her bare skin, as he presses his fingers inside her, his thumb against her. Embedded, Mac wears black cotton close to her skin and Jim lets himself have a moment or two to picture what she might wear at home. She wraps her fingers around his dick and strokes him until he comes. He kisses her neck and then squirms downwards, pulling her pants out of the way so that he can finish her off with his mouth. She pushes her fingers into his hair and twists until it pulls.

They fall asleep close but not touching.

(He barely thinks about it afterwards, like something from a dream. It was just comforting to have her that close).

*  
In the end, he's not sure that what they do is better than Evan Wright, but he's proud of what they achieve. They do it well. They do it _right_. Jim isn't scared of Marines anymore. He never develops a crush on Mac, no matter what she thinks.

And then they finally go home. Jim gets a job on a show that eventually gets cancelled; like a lot of people, Jim can't quite believe it when nobody's got a job for Mac.  
"Quit your job, Jim," she says. "Come with me."

This time, he's sober, but it doesn't matter - they both know he's going.  
He'd walk through walls to be right where she needed him to be.


End file.
